The boys are enjoying Stratego. I have stressed to them the importance of not losing any of the pieces.

A colleague tells of a time when you could go to the Birmingham Zoo and purchase marshmallows to feed the polar bears. He says they would stand up on their hind legs and motion for you to toss them to them. Imagining this spectacle has been one of my best laughs of 2012. That’s just so wrong.

Nathan knew “stench” meant smell, but he didn’t know it meant bad smell. So it was pretty funny to overhear him telling his mother that breakfast was making “quite a stench!”

I’m almost out of new tastes in my hot sauce order. There’s some unopened Sudden Death in there, but I’ve tasted Blair’s sauces on either side of it in the progression, so I’m not expecting any revelations. Soon it’ll be back for more. I’m doing two bottles of Mad Anthony’s XXXTRA HOT Private Reserve, and I’m doing the Heartbreaking Dawns three-pack again. I’m also going to select a sauce of at least 1,000,000 Scoville units. I think at that point I’m going to call myself done, as far as heat goes. I enjoyed the Blair’s Mega Death, but at 550,000 Scoville units it’s the first one that’s genuinely tested me, if only for a few minutes.

To someone who needs to hear it: I’m a good and discreet “girlfriend.” Please relax and talk to me.

Dudes and dolls, to be blunt, I’d like to build an audience. I’m writing with considerable care and sustained focus over there, and frankly, it’s more difficult than the way I write here. I’d like for there to be a reward for that. Please, go check me out over there. Pass the link(s) around. Phone the neighbors. Wake the kids. This is an extravaganza you won’t want to miss.

Despite its cultural saturation, I managed to stay away from The Hunger Games completely until I read it, which was today. I actually managed a fresh read of it in May 2012. Yay, me. Hey, it was only five months after Lea gave it to me for Christmas.

It’s the first book I’ve read in a long time during which I had to make a real effort to slow down. Particularly in the middle third, I was going as fast as I could because I was impatient to see what was going to happen next. That’s not a good way to appreciate writing, though, so I dialed it back just a bit.

What a marvelous time! I think I’ll read the next two, then start over and read all three again. I wanted the story today, and I’m sure I’ll want the story just as quickly with Catching Fire and Mockingjay. The second reading will be one to better appreciate any subtleties I’m missing.

This is the 1,985th post on BoWilliams.com. It appears roughly halfway through my blog’s sixth year in existence. It contains my blog’s first ever occurrence of “Kenya,” and only its fifth of “Hawaii.”

I trust this is sufficient testimony to my general lack of interest in questioning Barack Obama’s birthplace. My position has always been that there’s plenty enough wrong with the guy without going there. We don’t need to root through dumpsters in back alleys when we can read the billboards on the interstate.

The “error” was eventually corrected—in 2007. It was just a pesky little mistake that persisted for 16 years—right up until, oh, about the time Mr. Obama ran for president. See, it got kind of inconvenient then.

Now this shall certainly inflame the passions of those already inclined to believe our president is illegitimate because he was not born in the United States. This is a solid piece that seems to confirm that premise, the authenticity of which has been denied by no one.

My take on it is that I still really rather doubt Barack Obama was born overseas. However, I do find this biography eminently consistent with the way he operates. You see, in 1991, it was very cool for Obama to have been born in Kenya, so he was. He’s all things to all people. What do you need from me? What do you want to hear? Well, that’s who I am, that guy you’re looking for. Who is he again? Kenyan? Yeah, that’s me. See? It says so right here in my bio.

We all present different sides, to different people, in different circumstances. When you’re looking for conversation on a first date, you don’t lead with the zit in the middle of your back you can’t quite reach. But, gee, that’s not quite the same as a manufactured birthplace, is it?

(And don’t try to tell me Barack Obama never read it. In 1991, Obama would have read, at least ten times, anything in print in which his name appeared. He’d do it now, were it practical.)

So, my dear Obama supporters: can you write a plausible narrative through this that exonerates your hero? How do you think Obama’s birthplace came to be identified as Kenya? How did it continue as such for 16 years? Is this really a simple “fact-checking error”?

Are you nodding, saying “of course it is,” and still feeling the hope and change?